Barth

My Father’s last camp of internment as a POW in WWII was Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany. The following article taken from Joe O’Donnell’s “The Shoe Leather Espress” – Book 1 was contributed by Paul B. Brady, Sr., and he tells about his transport from Stalag Luft IV to Stalag Luft I. My Father was in a group who were transferred from Stalag Luft IV to Stalag Luft I. I don’t believe that my Father was suffering from injuries that would have kept him from being marched out of Camp as Joe and the thousands of other POWs were. This was not a pleasant journey for these men; it was miserable; but it was an easier route than the route that those in the Shoe Leather Express endured.

“Stalag Luft I was located on the Baltic Sea at Barth at 13 degrees Longitude and 54 degrees Latitude and approximately 175 miles from Gross Tychow by the 40 and 8 via Stettin. Apparently the Germans had problems with their arithmetic, as Paul B. Brady Sr. states 52 POWs were loaded into the boxcars for their evacuation from Gross Tychow to Barth.

Paul was with the 15th Air Corps, 465th Bomb Group, 781st Bomb Squadron. He was with the B-24 Outfit, Target, Vienna, Austria. Paul’s plane was shot down on July 16, 1944, by both flak and fighter planes. His left knee and shoulder was injured when he hit the ground, that ground was Yugoslavia. Paul spent ten days in a prison in Budapest. His next prisoner of war camp was Stalag Luft IV. In February, 1945, he was evacuated to Stalag Luft I and liberated May, 1945, by the Russians.

Paul was unable to walk too much due to his injury to his left knee, so as stated before he was put in a boxcar with 51 other prisoners of war in each car. Paul recalls, “It took us eight days to reach Stalag Luft I, we were seldom let out of the boxcars and only had two buckets for relief purposes, we had to bribe the guards with a few cigarettes when we stopped on the sidings to push some snow through the crack of the door so we could let it melt for drinking water. Of course this was the same opening all of us had been using to urinate through for days to try to conserve the two buckets for the POWs with dysentery that most of us had.”

Stalag Luft I, May, 1945. Paul states, “that the Russians took the area, an AmericanColonel Gabreski was running the camp and issued passes to go to town but only to the officers. the Russians told Colonel Gabreski that the enlisted were no longer prisoners of warand if he refused to let the enlisted POWs go to town they (the Russians) would use their tanks to destroy the barbed wire fences. That wasn’t necessary; the prisoners of war did what was necessary with the fences; a few of the prisoners of war camped out in the woods.”

Paul recalls that, “A lot of us went to surrounding towns and stayed with German families. They were happy to have us stay overnight because the Russian soldiers were hammering on doors all night and raping the women. One Russian soldier pounded on the door where I was staying but when he saw I was an American he left us alone. After a few days we went back to the camp. Colonel Gabreski was going to have us all court-martialed when we reached home for being A.W.O.L. (can you believe it?).”

“In town, I saw several POWs drinking vodka with the Russians, these Russians had horses and wagons. The POWs were drunk after only a few drinks, one POW gave his wrist watch to one of the Russian soldiers and the Russian soldier in return gave the POW a raw fish.”

“I saw several of the POWs sitting on the tailgate of one of the wagons riding out of town with the Russians. I still wonder to this day what became of those POWs.”

“The Russians looted the town completely.”

“Apparently the American Colonel Gabreski’s only concern was for the American officer POWs, with little regard for the enlisted men that were POWs in the same camp.”

Godfrey E. “Jeff” Boehm confirms the conduct of Colonel Gabreski. Jeff states that “It was reported that Colonel Gabreski, who was CO, handed out 800 court martial recommendations.”

Jeff first started flying missions from a wheat field outside of Maison Blanche-Casablanca in the summer of 1943; he was then moved to Tunis and later shifted to Sardina, still flying those same old beatup crates. The only way he could get airborne was to retract the wheels. We were finally given a new ship on January 24, 1944, and after we knocked out what was supposed to be the last road between Jerry’s front and Rome we were shot down, near Frosenone, Italy.

“We were moved up through the Brenner Pass into Germany and finally to Heydekrug, February 19, 1944. As the Red Army got closer we were moved on July 15, 1944, to Kiefheide (Gross Tychow). We were moved out of there to Barth, Stalag Luft I, that was on January 30, 1945. We were liberated by the Russian guerillas who overran the camp, that was May 1, 1945. Stalag Luft I was solely for officers and their orderlies before our arrival. When we crowded in they began to feel threatened and the chickenshit got very heavy.”

“After the Red Army came in we found a totally different kind of Army command. they (the American officers) became friendly and the only time we saw rank in evidence was when an order was given. The Russians had the airfield cleared in three days so we could be evacuated but it was thirteen days before the sky was crowded with B-17s for our mass move to Camp Lucky Strike near LeHavre, France. We had a couple of guys who spoke Russian so we spent quite a lot of time visiting with the Russians.”

“In Stalag Luft IV I spent a lot of time with the security groups which tried to keep track of what was going on in camp – - first, protecting POWs who had special reason to fear the Germans, i.e., Fred Meisel “the Chief” who passed as an Indian but was Jewish and had served in the German Army in WWI, so we could get word to the “man of confidence” if the Jerries suddenly took him out of the compound, and also trying to find German infiltrators among us posing as GIs and picking up useful intelligence information from us.”

Jeff was a radio gunner on a B-26, and lost just as many friends in training in Avon Park, Florida, as in combat. Jeff was shot down on his 23rd mission. Jeff now makes his home in San Jose, California, but was originally from Riverside, New Jersey.

Paul and Jeff’s statements would lead me to believe that the Russians had more respect for the American GI POW than the American POW officers. I never knew the American POW officers had American GI POWs as orderlies. I have a recorded statement that this dog-faced boot licking condition was forced upon American GI POWs at Stalag Luft III, Sagan.”

My father, Captain W. M. Nichols, landed in France on 13th May 1940. He was part of a brand new venture, a mobile neurosurgical unit to be deployed at the front for the first time in warfare. After a brief two weeks in action this unit was cut off by the German advance at Krombeke, not far from Dunkirk, while still struggling to deal with 800 wounded. The medical officers and wounded men were sent to captured hospitals in France and Belgium.

From there Captain Nichols and his unit were sent to a group of new prisoner hospitals in Thuringia, and he began work there in October 1940. He was frequently in trouble with the German authorities (he had been court-martialled for the first time within a few days of capture, while still in Belgium) and was moved round a number of hospitals as a result - Hildburghausen, Bad Sulza, Molsdorf, Rotenburg and Egendorf. He made many friends at this time and took a full part in the events of camp life. His letters describe the amateur theatricals (his transformation into a glamorous young woman), the sports ( cricket played with a ball of socks and a bat of a “young tree”), efforts to learn the violin from a tutor who spoke only Serbian, the parties, the Christmas meals, the library books (in one place he read 50 books in a month). All this is told in a highly entertaining style calculated to reassure his anxious family at home.

In the first week in January 1943, after yet another falling out with the authorities, he was sent to Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Pomerania, to be Camp Medical Officer. What he found there was at once disappointing and a great relief. There was no hospital and no surgical work, but the German camp staff was helpful and reasonable, and the camp numbers were small, only about 300.

At first he was the only medical officer there, but the camp grew very rapidly and after a year, he begged for help and a senior officer was sent to take over. Basically, Captain Nichols was a surgeon and though RAMC personnel had to turn their hands to anything, a physician and a dentist were also desirable. Col. Hankey (also captured in 1940) was both – a physician and a dentist. The two men got on well and made a good team. By the end of 1944, they had 5 doctors, about 6000 POWs and a hospital. A photograph in 1945 shows about 25 medical personnel, including orderlies. The camp numbers had risen by then to over 9000. The effort involved in obtaining essential facilities was unremitting, and the result of hours, days, and months of arguing, pleading, persuading and even bargaining with the authorities.

A medical officer had certain advantages over his comrades. Firstly, he had a job to do; technically, he was paid; technically he was not a prisoner of war, but was in a category described as “detained personnel.” Of course this meant little in practise. Secondly, he was working for his own people, infinitely preferable to forced work for the enemy. And thirdly, he had much more freedom of movement than most other POWs. Nichols had a pass which allowed him to visit all the compounds in Stalag Luft 1; he accompanied wounded or sick patients to Stralsund, Neubrandenburg, and Schwerin for hospital treatment; in Thuringia, there were inoculation clinics to run in work camps round the country; and there were regional meetings twice a year to present cases for repatriation . All this brought him in contact with many German officers, guards, and even occasionally civilians.

To begin with, in Stalag Luft I, Capt Nichols had to operate in the most primitive conditions. He describes his first appendix operation, using improvised instruments – pot handles and pokers, sterilised in pots and pans on the barrack stove. In “POWerful Memories”, written by Augustine Fernandez, there is a vivid and affectionate description of such an operation from the victim’s point of view! In “Behind Barbed Wire” by Morris Roy, the doctor is described as a “ dynamic and energetic personality”, and he took pride in making good the shortcomings of prison life, protecting his patients and boosting morale whenever possible. He relied on volunteers to help with the nursing and trained many non-medical assistants who became extremely efficient as anaesthetists and operating theatre staff. He spoke highly of the dedication of these men, many of whom had been patients themselves.

Nichols had made friends with the German doctors in the camp, and they greatly assisted him to equip his little hospital. One of them, Dr. Gunther Obst, gave the anaesthetic for that first operation (illegally, as permission to assist had been denied by Obst’s superiors). The two men became firm friends. Dr.Obst spoke good English, and they had many interests in common. They shared their enthusiasms, talked of books and mountains, languages and music, admired photographs of each other’s families, and dreamed of life after the war. A favourite daydream was to own a car with a radio, so that you could enjoy the freedom of the open road across Europe while listening to Bach at the same time – a dream in the realms of fantasy in 1943. Obst would unobtrusively admit Nichols to the German Officers mess to listen to concerts on records, and on at least one occasion took him to the Marienkirche (the church that could be seen from the camp) in Barth to hear the beautiful Buchholz organ which he played himself. Nichols was introduced to Obst’s fiancée, Ruth. Invitations to concerts were also issued by Oberst Scherer, the camp commandant, and the head of security was also a music lover, which indicates that at that time the officers of both sides were on good terms.

Doc Nic tells how the German doctors conspired with him to go out with a lorry at night and steal a whole X-ray plant from a disused hospital. “The only drawback was that we couldn’t give away our theft by indenting for new X-ray film and I had to screen everything, drawing what I saw on paper in the dark”. This happy state of affairs was not to continue for long. Perhaps an officious Nazi began to complain about the co-operation, or perhaps the two men were not circumspect enough even for a sympathetic commander like Scherer. Dr. Obst found himself in serious trouble and he was dismissed from his post and transferred to Stettin as a disciplinary penalty. Dr. Thomas Obst, Gunther’s son, thinks this took place at the end of 1943 as a direct result of assisting at the appendix operation against orders. This date is well before the major purge of German officers, including Scherer himself, which took place at the end of 1944. Obst’s name does not appear on the list of officers who were dismissed with Scherer. Nichols writes in home letters of German officers assisting in operations in May ’43 and again in September’43, but he does not name them.

Doc Nic

Even before his arrest, Dr. Obst had become unwell. Perhaps because of this, he was never brought to trial, and was transferred to hospitals as a patient, and then back to his home in Halle as his health deteriorated.

Nichols’ work grew with the camp. At first he had been active with the orchestra, the plays, much reading and giving lectures, but as more and more American flyers arrived in the camp he had no time for all of these recreations. He took up swimming and fencing in an attempt to keep fit, fighting up and down the wards and over the beds with one of his orderlies, a man called “Bunny” Fogell – loud cheers from the poor patients as they hacked and lunged at each other Musketeer style!

The workload now might include 100 patients a day on sick parade, and there was an urgent need for a new, or extended, hospital. After months of designing and planning, this was completed in November 1944, and there are photographs of a visit by a German General, who was delighted to see such a civilised enterprise in this remote camp. An absolutely essential refinement to the new surgical theatre was the acquisition of linoleum for the floor. The floorboards of the hut were so ill-fitting “ that the Baltic sand simply spouted up when the wind blew, and covered equipment and patient in a gritty layer.” Before linoleum, “one did not operate when the wind was in the East.” By constant badgering and cajoling, a proper operating table, steam steriliser, and lamps were requisitioned to complete the workplace. In spite of this improvement, however, there were never enough medical supplies in the way of drugs, instruments and dressings. Nichols had to fight for every bit, and 80% was provided by the Red Cross, along with vital invalid food. The linoleum came from the Swedish YMCA, whose representative was part if the IRC Association’s inspection team.

Operating Room at Stalag Luft I

Descriptions of surgical procedures include hernia, appendix, many American football accidents, and wound surgery. Of the two prisoners shot by the camp guards, Lt Wyman was moribund before he reached the hospital, but Nichols kept in touch after the war with George Whitehouse, the South African officer who survived. He sent me a copy of a children’s classic, “Jock of the Bushveldt”, which I still have.

The last few weeks of the war and the two weeks which followed, were hectic. The medical officers were fully stretched dealing with the poor creatures found at the local concentration camp, as well as preparing the hospital for evacuation and also some work with the civilian population in Barth (including a maternity case). At home, Martin Nichols never spoke of the concentration camp and his work there, preferring to retell the many stories of amusing or unusual events that took place during his 27 months at Stalag Luft 1. The Senior Allied Commanding officer, Colonel Zemke, tells the story of honouring an obligation to three German civilians by smuggling them out with the wounded. These girls were on the camp staff as secretaries and translators, had been helpful to the prisoners and quite probably faced ‘a fate worse than death’ if left behind at the mercy of the Russian army. The Russians absolutely forbade the removal of any German citizen, but Nichols and Hankey disguised them in nurses’ uniforms, and they flew to Britain with Nichols on 13th May 1945, exactly five years to the day since he had set foot in France.

On arrival, Doc Nic had to endure a good deal of teasing about bringing home not one, but three German women! The girls were eventually returned home to Germany, not knowing what they might find. Miraculously, their homes and their families were still there to welcome them. Ursula and Irma were to remain friendly with Martin all his life. When, in 1958, the family visited them in Germany, it was obvious that they regarded Doc Nic as somehow personally responsible for their safe return. We were made wonderfully welcome.

Martin brought home with him a mass of drawings, photographs, and other memorabilia, which became part of our childhood, as well as the many stories of his adventures. When I went with my brother and sister to visit Barth in 2005 to meet up with POW survivors and their families, it was the first time in our lives that we had met other people who shared these same stories and pictures – a most moving experience.

Dr. Gunther Obst

Perhaps the most precious thing he brought back was his continuing friendship with Gunther Obst. After the war, Gunther was able to get in touch with Martin, and the letters from Germany make for very difficult reading. Conditions there were quite terrible, and jobs almost impossible to find. That a highly trained ophthalmologist like Obst was driven to plead in his letters for darning wool and tobacco gives only the smallest indication of the situation then prevailing. The Obst family escaped with many starts and alarms from the Russian zone, but his circumstances were not much improved. In poor health, and without political influence, he had little chance of a permanent job. Desperate for work and security, people would do almost anything and trample on anyone to achieve these things. Martin looked for a post for Gunther in Britain through the British Council. He was told that hundreds of people were trying to do the same thing for their German friends. Eventually an opening was found, but it was too late; Gunther was too ill to take it up. He died in 1952, aged 40. By that time, Martin did have a car, though not the sort that sported the luxury of a radio, and he visited Gunther in a hospital just a few days before he died.

Dr Obst’s son Thomas, has been in touch with the Nichols family most of his life, and he came with us on our historic trip to Barth in 2005. We feel that we share with him a significant small part of our fathers’ lives, and through both these courageous men, we lay claim to the defining events of Europe’s recent history.

After the war, Martin Nichols returned to neurosurgery and in 1948 was appointed to the hospital service in Aberdeen, Scotland. There he set up a new neurosurgical unit, which served the whole of the North-East of Scotland, with satellite clinics in Inverness and Dundee. He was popular as a lecturer on many subjects, and his encyclopaedic knowledge can be ascribed in some degree to five years’ eccentric study in POW camps in Germany. He died in 1979.

Article written by Dr. Martin Nichols’ daughter, Judith Cameron, and printed with her permission.

The most striking view in Barth, to me, is the beautiful old church, the St. Marien Church. You can view it from everywhere and the men living in captivity could see it in the distance. Imagine how they would feel being able to see the outline of the steeple. I’m certain that their faith helped them to survive and this steeple was a constant reminder and most certainly provided some solace. I wrote this in my 2006 journal…..

“It was astounding to me to look at this steeple from the same area my father had. What a feeling it had to be for those men to view this house of worship from behind barbed wire – this beautiful steeple and this beautiful old church and there they were as prisoners doing the best they could to practice any sort of religion. There is just some tranquility that is felt gazing at this landmark and its appearance may have served to provide peacefulness to those captive bodies but free minds. “

Every day I add a bit from the notes that I kept throughout the process of retracing my father’s journey. Right now I’m still in 2005, which was the tour that I participated in returning to Barth, Germany, for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Stalag Luft I. That was the first big step in my mission to write my father’s story. In the journal I have already posted the time that we spent at Barth that year and I’m into the other areas that were included in the tour. They were just an extra bonus to me. I had never traveled by myself so it was a big deal. Some of those on the tour left after the Barth visit but I stayed with the group and I’m glad that I did because I saw other areas that I would never have seen. Of course the most important stops to me were the stops at the railway station in Frankfurt, Dulag Luft in Oberursel and the time spent in Barth, Stalag Luft I!! It was the beginning of so many important and special relationships.

I just wrote about the passing of Paul Schultz, the historian that I met who became a good friend and was always willing to help me in my research. He is one of the many people who I will eventually talk about, particularly the veterans. Any stories that I have collected will be added. They are all relevant in one way or another. I had realized when I would talk to the men who lived the story that my father did, that they all had their own different experiences but I learned that there were so many similarities in those experiences. So it was apparent to me that their stories were all relevant to my father’s. I learned so much from so many and I would like to thank them by doing my best to keep them remembered and what better way than to add their stories to this web site. Some people I know just a little about and others, I know much more; so a little or a lot will be added. It may take a while but it has become another part of my goal of keeping the memory alive!